What is Internet Connection Sharing?

With Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) in Windows XP, you can connect one computer to the Internet, then share the Internet service with several computers on your home or small office network. The Network Setup Wizard in Windows XP Professional will automatically provide all of the network settings you need to share one Internet connection with all the computers in your network. Each computer can use programs such as Internet Explorer and Outlook Express as if they were directly connected to the Internet.

You should not use this feature in an existing network with Windows 2000 Server domain controllers, DNS servers, gateways, DHCP servers, or systems configured for static IP addresses.
Enabling ICS

The ICS host computer needs two network connections. The local area network connection, automatically created by installing a network adapter, connects to the computers on your home or small office network. The other connection, using a 56k modem, ISDN, DSL, or cable modem, connects the home or small office network to the Internet. You need to ensure that ICS is enabled on the connection that has the Internet connection. By doing this, the shared connection can connect your home or small office network to the Internet, and users outside your network are not at risk of receiving inappropriate addresses from your network.
When you enable ICS, the local area network connection to the home or small office network is given a new static IP address and configuration. Consequently, TCP/IP connections established between any home or small office computer and the ICS host computer at the time of enabling ICS are lost and need to be reestablished. For example, if Internet Explorer is connecting to a Web site when Internet Connection Sharing is enabled, refresh the browser to reestablish the connection. You must configure client machines on your home or small office network so TCP/IP on the local area connection obtains an IP address automatically. Home or small office network users must also configure Internet options for Internet Connection Sharing. To enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) Discovery and Control on Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition computers, run the Network Setup Wizard from the CD or floppy disk on these computers. For ICS Discovery and Control to work on Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition computers, Internet Explorer version 5.0 or later must be installed.

To enable Internet Connection Sharing on a network connection

You must be logged on to your computer with an owner account in order to complete this procedure.
Open Network Connections. (Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double click Network Connections.)

Click the dial up, local area network, PPPoE, or VPN connection you want to share, and then, under Network Tasks, click Change settings of this connection.

On the Advanced tab, select the Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection check box.
If you want this connection to dial automatically when another computer on your home or small office network attempts to access external resources, select the Establish a dial up connection whenever a computer on my network attempts to access the Internet check box.

If you want other network users to enable or disable the shared Internet connection, select the Allow other network users to control or disable the shared Internet connection check box.

Under Internet Connection Sharing, in Home networking connection, select any adapter that connects the computer sharing its Internet connection to the other computers on your network. The Home networking connection is only present when two or more network adapters are installed on the computer.


To configure Internet options on your client computers for Internet Connection Sharing

Open Internet Explorer. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click Internet Explorer.)

On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.

On the Connections tab, click Never dial a connection, and then click LAN Settings.

In Automatic configuration, clear the Automatically detect settings and Use automatic configuration script check boxes.

In Proxy Server, clear the Use a proxy server check box.

make your Desktop Icons Transparent

I share this tips just for you, here the steps following :
Go to ontrol Panel > System, > Advanced > Performance area > Settings button Visual Effects tab "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the Desktop

How to Upgrade Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition Profiles to Windows XP Domain User Profiles


This guide describes how to upgrade a Microsoft Microsoft Windows 98-based, or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition-based client that has user profiles to a Microsoft Windows XP-based client.

The following steps enable the Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) profiles to be retained throughout the process.

Your best method to retain the profiles is to join the domain during the upgrade installation process.
Otherwise, you must use a workaround method to transfer the profile information over to the Windows XP profile.

During the upgrade installation process, at the networking section, the administrator is offered the choice to join a domain or a workgroup.
If you join the domain at this juncture, you ensure that all the existing profiles are migrated successfully to the Windows XP-based installation.

If you did not join the computer to the domain during the upgrade process, you must use the following workaround method:

Join the upgraded computer to the target domain.

All applicable users must log on and log off (which generates a profile).

Copy the appropriate Application Data folder from the Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me profiles to the newly created user profiles.

Adsense Revenue Come From

Each of the above four elements contribute directly to the total revenue that your Adsense Ads will produce. Don't just work on one of them though because if any one is weak it will hold your potential earnings back. Lets break each factor down....

Traffic Levels - The more people that see you Adsense Ads, the more likelihood there is that someone will click on them. As I examine the statistics provided by Adsense that report my daily earnings I notice that my earnings in the past 8 months have increased considerably as my total page impressions have increased.

For example earlier in the week when Slashdot linked up to this post I had an influx of 50,000 visitors in 24 hours to my blog - it doesn't take a genius to work out what this did to my Adsense earnings that day! Work on increasing your traffic levels and you should see an increase in your Adsense Revenue.

High Paying Ads - Once again I'm stating the obvious, but if the content you provide on your blog attracts high paying ads you're going to do significantly better. For example it has been documented that the PVR Blog is doing pretty well when it comes to high Adsense earnings - the secret of its success is partly due to it being served with ads that are high paying. The topic of the PVR blog is, as you'd expect, PVR technology including TiVo, Replay TV etc. This is cutting edge technology and therefore advertisers are willing to pay top dollar to get their products and services out there! In comparison if a person was to start a blog on 'toothpicks' I suspect the ads are not likely to pay very much. It would take very high traffic levels to earn as much from a toothpick blog as it would the PVR blog.

Relevant Ads - A second reason the PVR Blog is successful is that it servers relevant ads. To put it simply people looking for information on PVR technology are confronted by Adsense ads for PVR technology. I recently visited a blog that was having trouble getting relevant ads - they had a blog on Tourist destinations in Australia - but unfortunately they were getting Adsense ads for remote control cars. You can guess what their revenue was like. Increase the relevancy of your Ads to your content and you are one step closer to increasing your Adsense revenue.

Optimally Positioned and Designed Ads - One of the coolest things about the Adsense program is that they give you freedom in choosing the best position and color scheme for your ads. Just like in the wider world of advertising - positioning is a key element to an ads success. A Billboard positioned on a road where no one drives is not likely to get the same results as one positioned on a busy intersection. The position and design of your Adsense Ads is critical - if they are out of site they'll never get clicked on.

Bringing them Together - The above four elements are in many ways pretty obvious when spelt out like this - the challenge comes to improving each to optimize Adsense revenue.

Your revenue will only grow as high as the weakest one of these factors on your blog. For example if you have high paying, relevant, well designed and positioned ads but no traffic you'll not do well. Likewise if you have high traffic, high paying and relevant ads but they are poorly designed an in a position where they'll never be seen - you'll waste all your other hard work. Its not enough to work on one element.

How to Success With Adsense?

Yes, acceptance by Google into the Adsense program does not guarantee your success. The fact remains that certain blogs will always be more successful than others at generating income.

Future posts in this series will focus upon strategies and tips for increasing your revenue but it should be stated here that the most successful sites are generally sites with very high traffic levels and/or content that is directly related to a particular product or service (the more targeted and niche-like the better).

It is also worth saying that Adsense works best on pages with lots of text content. It only reads text in determining ads, not images so make sure you have enough relevant content.

AdSense Tips to help you

Google does not accept every site that applies to the Adsense program.
Google Adsense Program Policies indicate that the content of sites must not contain things like excessive profanity, pornography, illicit drugs etc. Basically your blog needs to have content that is reasonably 'family friendly'.
Also in their policy document is a reference to them not normally accepting pages of a personal nature.

This is the topic of discussion in many Adsense forums and is obviously open to different interpretations. Many (if not most) blogs are personal in nature - however to maximize your chances of approval by Adsense a blog should be targeted on a particular topic/s. For example whilst this blog is often personal in nature - most of my individual posts (pages) focus on very specific themes which are repeated throughout the blog. update - this may have changed recently with Blogger now allowing blogger blogs to use Adsense.
Sites accepted into the Adsense program are also required to be easily navigable, have an adequate quantity of text based content (don't apply if you've been blogging a week) and be written in English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, or Spanish. They may not to have excessive advertising or other contextual/competing advertising.
Whilst not stated in the Adsense Policy document, many also believe that sites accepted into the program also need to have reasonable levels of traffic. If your blog is new, it may be worth waiting a few weeks or months before applying to build up traffic and content levels. Others speculate that a professionally designed, well-organized and privately hosted blog has a better chance of being accepted. The more professional and successful your blog appears the more likely it is to be accepted by Adsense.
If still in doubt after reading Google Adsense Program Policies you can email Google for clarification or just apply and see how you go.

Problem With Your PageRank?

All website start with no PageRank. It is also probably not indexed. See Check if your website is indexed and how to get it indexed. For those who are in a hurry, see Fastest way to get indexed by search engine.

Your website may also be black listed by search for practicing Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) such as making text invisible by making the font color same as background.

A blogger complained his blog's PageRank has been downgraded to unranked. There can be various reasons why a website's PageRank may be downgraded. One of them is what they call the "Google Dance". Google changes its algorithm and some websites may get their PageRank increased, some downgraded, some downgraded very badly. I am not aware of anything we can do about this, unless you know the inner workings of Google search engines which they will NEVER reveal.

Or perhaps, you can. Check Google Webmaster Guidelines and see if you are complying with their guidelines.

After ensuring your website complies with their guidelines, if you don't already have a Google sitemap for your website, add Google sitemap (click BACK button to get back to this page) to your website, then go to Google Webmaster Tools, click "request reconsideration", select "request reconsideration", select the website if you have more than one, submit request, then pray hard.

Recently, I read that Google has downgraded blogs which participate in "Pay per post" to ZERO (0). I heard too that those who have Text Link Ads on their websites got their PageRank downgraded.

NOTE: Some sites recommend adding rel="nofollow" attribute to the "a" hyperlink tag that someone paid you to add to your blog, and then asking for reconsideration. This will probably work. Each person have their own views about what is right and wrong, but my view is that if someone paid you to put that link and you add that rel="nofollow" attribute to get your PageRank up again

Speed up your old browsing machines

This is a great tip to speed up your browsing of Windows XP machines. Its actually a fix to a bug installed as default in Windows 2000 that scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks.

And it turns out that you can experience a delay as long as 30 seconds when you try to view shared files across a network because Windows 2000 is using the extra time to search the remote computer for any Scheduled Tasks. Note that though the fix is originally intended for only those affected, Windows 2000 users will experience that the actual browsing speed of both the Internet & Windows Explorers improve significantly after applying it since it doesn't search for Scheduled Tasks anymore. Here's how :

Open up the Registry and go to :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace

Under that branch, select the key :

{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

and delete it.

This is key that instructs Windows to search for Scheduled Tasks. If you like you may want to export the exact branch so that you can restore the key if necessary.

This fix is so effective that it doesn't require a reboot and you can almost immediately determine yourself how much it speeds up your browsing processes

Upgrade Your Windows XP

You can upgrade a computer that runs Windows 98, Windows 98SE, or Windows Me to Windows XP Home Edition. Those same versions, along with Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and Windows 2000 Professional, can be upgraded to Windows XP Professional.

(1).To ensure a smooth upgrade and avoid networking problems, follow these tips before starting the upgrade:

(2)Install all network cards. XP will detect them and automatically install the right drivers.

(3)Have your Internet connection available. The XP setup process will connect to a Microsoft server to download the latest setup files, including changes that have been made since XP was released.

Some programs are incompatible with XP and can cause networking problems. Un-install these programs. After the upgrade is complete and the network is working, re-install XP-compatible versions of these programs: Internet Connection Sharing, NAT, Proxy Server Anti-Virus Firewall.

Search Screen = Classic Look

First time when i saw the default search panel in Windows XP, my instinct was to return it to its classic look; that puppy had to go. Of course, I later discovered that a doggie door is built into the applet. Click "Change preferences" then "Without an animated screen character."

If you'd rather give it a bare-bones "Windows 2000" look and feel, fire up your Registry editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ CabinetState.

You may need to create a new string value labeled "Use Search Asst" and set it to "no".

make money from Google Adsense?

there are a lot of people out there making a lot more money than I am using Adsense - however most of them are not telling their secrets

- well not for free anyway. I've got no secrets to hide and am willing to share what I've learnt since I signed up for the program 8 months ago. If you want a REAL expert's opinion on Adsense I'd recommend buying Joel Comm's What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense E-Book. Joel earns $15,000 per month from Adsense and has some good things to share.

I know some bloggers are put off or offended by the idea of making money from blogging so I'll try not to let these posts dominate my blog - however if you are not interested in the topic, simply skip over these posts.

I am going to assume a few things in this series to cut down the amount of introductory comments I have to make. Here is what I am assuming:

You have a blog. Whilst most of the following tips will apply to other types of websites I run Adsense on blogs and will speak from that experience.
You have (or will) read a basic overview of Adsense and have some understanding of what it is.
You have(or will) read the program policies as outlined by Google. These give details of site eligibility, ad placements and other requirements for using the system.
Enough introductory comments - lets get stuck into the Adsense Tips for Bloggers

If Google AdSense heatmap did not help you

Now, another experiment based on the Google heatmap. As mentioned in the Google support, ad units placed near the navigation get high clickthrus because the visitor eyes are focused on that area.

Honestly, I was not happy to do this. I believe that such AdSense ad placements would generate accidental clicks, which, was not something I wanted to do and, also, would lead to poor visitor experience - it would be akin to fooling the visitor into clicking on those ads.

So I put an ad unit at the top of the left navigation. The results over a period of one week that I ran that experiment - 0.01% clickthru! And to couple this, the ads weren't high paying.

Placing Your Google AdSense at Heatmap Hotspots

When I first implemented AdSense on this website, I used the 160x600 format and put it on the left column. The ads were blended.

This used to get me a very low CTR. In fact, I read somewhere that ads eliciting few clicks (CTR less than 0.5%) are removed from the program. I knew I was doing something terribly wrong and this was evident when I checked out the generalized heatmap on Google AdSense support page. The left vertical column had little or negligible visitor attention. So, even though the ads were blended, the CTR was pathetic.

I then changed my strategy and put ads with the content as I had seen on so may other high content websites. The results were startling. The clickthru rate (CTR) increased by a factor of 7 and the earnings jumped five times.

So the Google AdSense heatmap did help me. It showed me where not to put the ads.

Increase Your AdSense earnings by CTR

Generally, We all want to increase our AdSense revenue. One way to do this is to increase the clickthru rate - other factors remaining constant, a two-fold increase in CTR will result in doubling of the earnings.

Before we delve deeper into whether the Google AdSense CTR increases once you place the ads at the heatmap hot spots, its good to take a moment off and consider whether this technique is indeed legitimate. I think this is not black hat as it's endorsed by Google itself. In fact, they provide a generalized web site heatmap. The AdSense support page mentions that advertisements placed near content rich sections or the web site navigation will perform well as the visitor's attention is focused on these areas. However, Google always recommends putting the user first when deciding on ad placement. Google has also suggested that blending AdSense ads on certain designs and layout might increase the CTR.

If we taken the two strategies together - placing AdSense ads on heatmap hot spots and blending them into the design - shouldn't this make your ad CTR go through the roof? This is what we shall find out.

How To Make Private Folder

Following this steps to make your folders private :
- Open My Computer
- Double-click the drive where Windows is installed (usually drive (C:), unless you have more than one drive on your computer).
- If the contents of the drive are hidden, under System Tasks, click Show the contents of this drive.

- Double-click the Documents and Settings folder.
- Double-click your user folder.
- Right-click any folder in your user profile, and then click Properties.
- On the Sharing tab, select the Make this folder private so that only I have access to it check box.



Important :

To open My Computer, click Start, and then click My Computer.
This option is only available for folders included in your user profile. Folders in your user profile include My Documents and its subfolders, Desktop, Start Menu, Cookies, and Favorites. If you do not make these folders private, they are available to everyone who uses your computer.
When you make a folder private, all of its subfolders are private as well. For example, when you make My Documents private, you also make My Music and My Pictures private. When you share a folder, you also share all of its subfolders unless you make them private.
You cannot make your folders private if your drive is not formatted as NTFS For information about converting your drive to NTFS

New Driver : Sound Blaster

Any loads of problems reported by users with Soundblaster cards on Windows XP Creative has stepped up and offered drivers for at least some models of their Sound Blaster cards, but check your particular model closely.

I have downloaded the SB128 drivers and my sound problems have been resolved..! So they do work.

http://www.creative.com/support/winxp/

Upgrading Win 98 or Win Millennium Edition Profiles To Win XP Domain User Profiles

I show you how to upgrade a Microsoft Windows 98-based, or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition-based client that has user profiles to a Microsoft Windows XP-based client.

You can following steps by step to enable the Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) profiles to be retained throughout the process.

Your best method to retain the profiles is to join the domain during the upgrade installation process, and you must use a workaround method to transfer the profile information over to the Windows XP profile.

During the installation process, at the networking section, the administrator is offered the choice to join a domain or a workgroup.
If you join the domain at this juncture, you ensure that all the existing profiles are migrated successfully to the Windows XP-based installation.

If you did not join the computer to the domain during the process, you must use the following workaround method:

Join the computer to the target domain.

All applicable users must log on and log off (which generates a profile).

Copy the appropriate Application Data folder from the Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me profiles to the newly created user profiles.

Back To Classic Look

First time when i saw the default search panel in Windows XP, my instinct was to return it to classic look; that puppy had to go. Of course, I later discovered that a doggie door is built into the applet. Click "Change preferences" then

"Without an animated screen character." If you'd rather give it a bare-bones "Windows 2000" look and feel, fire up your Registry editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ CabinetState.

You may need to create a new string value labeled "Use Search Asst" and set it to "no".

Remove Windows XP's Messenger

Windows 2000 power users should already be familiar with this tweak.


Fire up the Windows Explorer and navigate your way to the %SYSTEMROOT% \ INF folder. What the heck is that thingy with the percentage signs? It's a variable. For most people, %SYSTEMROOT% is C:\Windows. For others, it may be E:\WinXP. Get it? Okay, on with the hack! In the INF folder, open sysoc.inf (but not before making a BACKUP copy first).

Before your eyes glaze over, look for the line containing "msmsgs" in it. Near the end of that particular line, you'll notice that the word "hide" is not so hidden. Go ahead and delete "hide" (so that the flanking commas are left sitting next to one another). Save the file and close it. Now, open the Add and Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Click the Add / Remove Windows Components icon. You should see "Windows Messenger" in that list. Remove the checkmark from its box, and you should be set. NOTE: there are other hidden system components in that sysoc.inf file, too. Remove "hide" and the subsequent programs at your own risk.